1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to appliances and more particularly, though not solely to home appliances with inbuilt sound generating devices capable of producing audible noise in a controlled manner which may then be transmitted (for example, by telephone) as data to a remote receiving location.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Some home appliances (such as laundry washing machines and refrigerators) are today fitted with a serial communications port (or other similar output device) allowing the appliance to be connected to a personal computer which, utilising purpose built software, may interrogate information stored within the appliance. The information stored by the appliance may include the appliance's present status, temperatures, status of valves/shutters, user settings, fault information and number of cycles completed. As it is sometimes difficult or inconvenient for a service person to visit the site at which the appliance is located (which may be many kilometers from the service person's base) some existing home appliances have been fitted with modems to allow a service person to remotely interrogate data stored in the appliance. However, the additional cost involved in fitting all production appliances with a modem is unacceptably high. In addition, the user of the machine would be required to connect a telephone line to the appliance (either sharing an existing telephone line or installing a new one) and this is clearly unacceptable.
Most modem home appliances are at least fitted with a buzzer or beeper (for example a simple piezo-electric device) to, for example, alert the user that the washing cycle of a laundry washing machine or dishwasher is completed or the door of a refrigerator is open. Accordingly, it would be an advantageous improvement to utilise the existing noise producing capability of the appliance in the production of a data signal rather than adding additional expensive hardware.
In any event, if the audible data signal is produced at the home appliance and the point of entry of the data signal into the communications network (for example the telephone network) is some distance from the appliance, then the audible data signal must first travel some distance through (and be influenced by) the home appliance's surroundings (for example, air, walls, carpets, curtains and furniture). These surroundings introduce changes to the data signal through the introduction of noise (such as the introduction of echos) which must somehow be accounted for or removed from the transmitted data signal.
Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to provide an appliance comprising:
sound generating means adapted to, upon appropriate energisation, produce audible tones ordinarily provided as a warning and/or verification signal to a user, PA1 user input means to allow a user to enter instructions to said appliance, PA1 data storage means which stores information on the operation of said appliance, PA1 control means which stores a program which causes the controller to: PA1 i) receive said instructions from said user input means, PA1 ii) enter a special operating mode in response to said user input, and PA1 iii) energise said sound generating means to issue audible tones in a predetermined sequence corresponding to information stored in said data storage means. PA1 sound generating means adapted to, upon appropriate energisation, produce audible tones ordinarily provided as a warning and/or verification signal to a user, PA1 user input means to allow a user to enter instructions to said appliance, PA1 data storage means which stores information on the operation of said appliance, PA1 control means which controls the operation of said appliance, said method comprising the steps of: PA1 i) receiving said instructions from said user input means, PA1 ii) entering a special operating mode in response to said user input, and PA1 iii) energising said sound generating means to issue audible tones in a predetermined sequence corresponding to information stored in said data storage means.
In a second aspect, the invention consists in a method of controlling an appliance, said appliance having
To those skilled in the art to which the invention relates, many changes in construction and widely differing embodiments and applications of the invention will suggest themselves without departing from the scope of the invention as defined in the appended claims. The disclosures and the descriptions herein are purely illustrative and are not intended to be in any sense limiting.
The invention consists in the foregoing and also envisages constructions of which the following gives examples.